It's simply a matter of connecting the blocks together like redstone wire, then having a centeral unit that can be activated (using airships in this case) which will cause it to lift off the ground and turn into a quick screened model and be piloted like an airship would, then on collision with anything the thing would turn solid again or if a special key was pressed. As long as you take the nodes of all those connected blocks and form a model upon completion of that structure (noted from a centeral unit where you confirm final product) you could have it build a model around the basic shape. That's easier said than done I suppose though.
I probably wouldn't take even that much. The collision detection is already done, in the boat, and the connecting tiles is already there, with redstone. It is just a matter of putting them together, and throwing it in. I can easily see a block made by 9 lightstones being the central block, and it would be minimally easy to make a block that connects to itself. The central block takes all of the wall blocks it can make a chain through central blocks and wall blocks and makes them all attached. Then, just add boat physics, and done.
Now, I know little to nothing about programming, and how effective a few copy-paste'd chunks of code would be, so take my thoughts with a few dozen shakes of salt.
Soo.... on an unrelated topic, what, if any, texture packs to y'all use? I use a custom Painterly. If anyone actually cares, I'll upload it, but not a whole lot special about it.